


Cruel Joke

by Juceisloose



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Telltale Series (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Smitten Bruce, Soulmarks, kind of, kind of deep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 03:40:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14907632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juceisloose/pseuds/Juceisloose
Summary: Bruce had never seen the truth in 'you never know what you have until it's gone', even when scientists linked the development of soulmarks to losing your soulmate, like cruel poetry. And then John turned against him on the bridge, and Bruce was enlightened as their stitch was torn.





	Cruel Joke

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, to help make things clearer, in this universe soulmarks, which, on here, are the names of your soulmate on your wrist, appear when you lose your soulmate, whether it be to death or a relationship decline. I've kind of taken the 'you don't know what you have until it's gone' saying and morphed it into 'you don't know who your soulmate is until they're gone'. I thought of this after seeing many beautiful and unique ideas about how soulmarks are formed and what they are, because I was interested in forming an idea myself. Someone might have already used this idea, but to my knowledge I created this. I know, it isn't very good, and this is so short D: I was conflicted on whether to write John's reaction, and the reactions of Bruce's peers. Finally, I just left it. Let me know what you think!

  
_You don’t know what you have until it’s gone._

Bruce Wayne had never understood that saying. Not really. If you truly loved something, whether it be a somebody or just a something, you shouldn’t have to wait for heartbreak, or just the devastating loss of something, before its profound significance in your life becomes ultimately apparent, because things you love should leave an impact on your life so stark it’s inevitably blinding. And what was the point, in the end, of figuring out the sentimentality of something when it is out of reach? It isn’t filling a hole inside you you hadn’t realised it was filling anymore, so the realisation would unveil nothing but pain, and have no outcome of importance.

But he’d never been in love before, and his few ardours were pain and gunshots and cuts and scars and bruises and Kevlar in the night-time, so perhaps his opinion was biased. He hadn’t let himself fall in love, among never finding someone to crack the stoic armour sheening his blackened heart. No man, no woman, had ever even chipped it – marred its untouchable surface. Many had attempted to, so it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Alfred had started fearing many years ago no one ever would. To be honest, Bruce had too.

Well. It had never been eroded before one man.

He supposed, among the understandable confusion over the subject, that the fact soulmates were very much the same, men and women who did not realise what they had until it was gone, should not have startled him. It was almost grimly poetic; a diabolical metaphor.

Perhaps his outright bafflement and surprise stemmed from the general fairytale idea that soulmates were destined to live impeccable days together until their deaths played out saccharinely side-by-side, a completed jigsaw to the end – no flaws, no bumps in the road, because soulmates were laced from the same stitch, sculpted by the same godly hand. Soulmates were not supposed to lose each other, not temporarily, not permanently. That’s what princesses and princes were for, to demonstrate a perfect love story orchestrated from childhood, namely about the smoothness of destined romance. But the truth was, people who were destined to be together, decided by whatever higher power weaved coy fate, did not live in perpetual sacred harmony, so intricately structured for each other they knew exactly how to dance through their time together without embitterment.

Love, his mother had always said with her hand in his hair and her adorned lips near his ear, was not about a perfect life. No couple were destined to snake cunningly past obstacles dished out to them intending for them to fall, regardless of the idea of ‘soulmates’, even if most couples would much prefer to. Love was about those obstacles, not about the lack of but the natural presence of them: love was about powering through those obstacles together, and loving the other person afterwards; reverently adoring their every flaw and imperfection for what it was, a part of them. In his mind, and the mind of his deceased mother, love that was as steady as tepid water was not love; it was a romance novel, or just a glittery miracle.

That was one thing he was sure of, anyway, when it came to soulmates. He had general knowledge about science, mostly for the benefit of his line of night-work, but he knew nothing about the science of soulmates, or soulmarks. No one did, not even real scientists that had dedicated industrious years of their fickle existences to learning the arts of human atomy. After all, there was no logic in finding the name of another sentient being on your wrist, over the web of your veins, when you lose them, whether that be to death, or a breakup, or a torn friendship. Ink could not simply hide inside your skin and be triggered to the surface in certain situations, because it was manmade and not a part of the human’s natural makeup. Tattoos – which were what soulmarks were reminiscent of – were not genetic, physical factors, but environmental factors alone.

Bruce had tried to develop a theory. Maybe there was something unique the body produced during that type of situation; maybe soulmates were the only people who could produce a certain variation of physical distress. He’d tried to think of it like adrenaline: adrenaline’s main function was to work fight-or-flight, induced by fear and danger. He hadn’t gotten very far with the theory. Even if it was triggered by some kind of unique hormone, or something similar, there were so many questions that could not be answered, like the ink, or how the body knew what name to spell out.

So soulmarks, and the idea of soulmates, became like the idea of death: they were both accepted facts, that you would die one day and you had a soulmate somewhere who, by the way, was near impossible to find, but there was no explanation behind it. It wasn’t certain what was after death, if there was anything at all, and it wasn’t certain how soulmates were real, or how soulmarks worked. The idea had bled into society, but it was by no means a hype. Not many people found their soulmates. There were so many people in the world, and only one was destined to be yours.

He’d known one woman who’d found her soulmate. The man had been her best friend. They had not confessed their feelings for each other, if they’d even developed them, and they hadn’t had time to. He’d died in a car crash. She’d found his name on her wrist, accompanied by listless burning, before she’d received news of his accident – a quick and painless one, it was assured, but that had given her slim comfort. She’d described a dreary night – a blackened sky, a rain-beaten road – and a serene walk home before she’d felt it, flares of heat over her wrist, and she’d seen a name there that would change her eternally. She’d never properly recovered from it, not when he’d still known her, anyway. He’d seen it as a sort of cruel joke. How could destiny be so cold as to tell her what she could have had when the opportunity for it had been ravaged from her lax hands? Almost like it was taunting her, brushing her with the ghost of what should have been; he should have been hers, hers to cherish for life, cherish and hold and possess and complete, and it had taken a car crash for her to be informed. He’d detested the idea of soulmates since.

_You don’t know what you have until it’s gone._

That wasn’t right. You do know what you have. But you take it for granted because you don’t expect it to ever become lost. She had not expected her best friend to be killed by a drunk driver. And he had not expected to lose John Doe.

At least, most of him, the part that was so blotched by affection he couldn’t see, had not, and couldn’t have, envisioned a world without John inside it: a world without chalky skin and pearly teeth and grassy hair and sunny smiles. The idea of it was just so wrong, even as he watched him slip away.

He should have been thankful he had not lost him to death, just like the woman had. He was corporeal somewhere – somewhere without Bruce.

_The stitch is broken._

Bruce had experienced pain. Despair was not his friend, but it was his shadow. He had, at such a corruptible age, bore witness to the grotesque, inhumane death of his parents, and had become scarred for years to come through it; he’d heard the explosion that had killed his closest friend, had felt the trembles that had shredded his soul jarring everything from his feet to his teeth, and had been there to hear his last words. His name, or one of them, was the last thing Lucius Fox had said before he’d said nothing at all.

This was somehow different. Their deaths had picked another hole out of his heart, leaving the edges ragged and inflamed, but seeing John take _her_ by the waist, and to watch his lips cover hers, knowing John had removed himself from Bruce and given himself to her, like coffee switching mugs – there had never been a pain like it. The hollowness spread from his heart to the tips of his fingers, coiling like rancid energy inside him. He was powerless to stop it, so powerless, and that was one of the worst parts. He had done this, and he could not undo it, not then, not when John dipped her, held her, felt her, experiencing her for the first time, and, to Bruce’s silent distress, not the last. Fingers, papery, familiar fingers, fingers that destiny claimed were made for Bruce, wrapped around hers, and then they were falling, and John Doe was gone.

Yes, indeed. Soulmates were a cruel, cruel joke.

The pain started gentle, easily ignored. He almost did, through the painful numbness that felt like salt and ice on his skin, on his organs, everywhere. It was like an itch at first – slightly more insistent than an itch. But that was an ember, and the ember was fed into a flame. Burning flared where itching had started, and the sensation something was warping underneath his skin, inside his wrist, morphing into something, something he didn’t know, made him look down.

There were two lines of text. The top one, closest to his palm, was indecipherable; he could see a J at the start, and an N further on, both in capitals, but chaotic scribbles smeared the words out of existence. They were plain black ink, a monotone, but the text underneath it, scrawled in near-juvenile handwriting, was purple and green, a ladder of both colours, one after the other.

_John Doe._

He was not surprised. As John had once said, Bruce had subconsciously confessed to himself long ago that he and John not being meant for each other made little sense, regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of their morals, regardless of anything – and he’d been right, and John had been wrong, just like he’d always suspected. Harley was not tenderly crafted to be John’s other half, and she never had been. All this time, John had been telling the other half of his soul, the man destined to be his, that she had been. And she _hadn’t been._

Bruce almost laughed. Almost. But, even as he tried, it came out as a sort of garbled sob.

Had John read the name on his wrist by now? Was he surprised? Disgusted? Angry? Delighted? Did it mean nothing to him? Would he hide it from Harley, and resume their lives together anyway, knowing he could never wholeheartedly be hers?

Bruce sank to his knees, his forehead leaning against the railing to the bridge. It was cold, and ripped sharp pain across his skin.

Maybe people were right.

Maybe people didn’t truly know what they had until it was gone.

Maybe they did, but they never expected to lose it.

Either way, Bruce was sure then more than before: everything was a cruel, cruel joke.

 

 

 


End file.
